interest free purchase is ALWAYS overpriced

pay cash, bargain them down

There's a difference in price? I haven't found that (not with HN, anyway).

rule #2: don't buy computers from any store which also sells toasters

I've never bought a PC from Harvey Norman.

Flexirent.

so why are you considering buying a mac from harvey norman ?

what's the difference

apples are hard to get any real markdown on from the retail price.. apple are very strict with minimum prices and also don't give retailers much margin at all..

i've noticed myer are selling macs now.. maybe they do some aggressive credit stuff..

way to read, non reader.

also, are you buying a desktop or a laptop? and do you have a full time-ish job? you might be able to salary sacrifice a laptop with your employer and get it tax free..

al - how does this work? someone else suggested this to me, but i don't know how to do it or how i woudl approach my work etc

Get someone who is a teacher or a full time student to buy it for you from apple.com.au store and you'll get 10% off.

"how i woudl approach my work etc"

go ask your finacial dept if they do salary sacrificing .. easy

gets paid for out of your pre-tax income ... good deal

yeah, salary sacrifice is good as is educational discount.

I think apple have stopped edu pricing.

I'm doing the salary sacrifice anyway, but it'll be over 3 months so the immediate funds are the issue.

al - looking at a 20" iMac, or a MacBook. Haven't decided, exactly.

It's for study, and being via correspondence I'm not actually part-time, as I'm doing the degree at the same pace as if i was on campus.

horse - HN don't even sell them. That was an example.

> I think apple have stopped edu pricing.

Nope, not from their online store (but they have for iPods, which kind of makes sense...)

What?

sharp,

talk to your paymaster. salary sacrifice just means that the item is paid for out of your pre-tax income, thereby affording you the double benefit of reducing your payable income tax and (possibly) actually increasing your take home pay, in certain circumstances. if your work offers this, you can sal pack nearly anything - workers in healthcare/charity orgs can often sal pack their mortage, saving $$$ on tax.

days away from a new MacBook Pro, can't freaking wait.

Wouldn't mind selling my 24'' desktop. 10 months old. 2.8ghz/500gb hdd/2gb ram, runs beautifully, i just want a 27''. Looking for $1350... pm if interested.

i apple mac x

posting on m+n, from bed, on my new macbook pro. love.

first post from my new mbp. its amazing.

Q: my external HDD has started behaving strangely. I can save files to it, but can't copy or move/drag anything from it to my iBook. Read/Write privileges are all OK, and it's not doing it with EVERY file, just some/most of them.

Does this sound like a corruption that will require a reformat? Please say no, because how on earth do I get all this stuff OFF it before I reformat it?

Help?

First thing to try is Disk Utility - repair permissions on the volume and see if that helps.

I did! It says the disk (external HDD) can't be unmounted.

My internal disk is behaving fine, just the external, and only in the past few days...

Try resetting/flashing the PRAM as well, as follows (copy/pasted 'cos I couldn't be bothered typing it again):

How to reset or zap the PRAM in Mac OS X: Leopard.

1. Restart your computer while holding down the keys Command+Option+P+R.

2. Wait for your computer to chime twice before releasing the keys.

The screen will flash when the PRAM resets.

Drowned my macbook over the weekend. Can't afford to replace it :(

thanks feralmedia.

same for Tiger?

and because this is my external HDD which doesn't actually have an OS on it, do you think doing this to my iBook that it's connected to would actually do anything?

Same for Tiger. And whatever the other cats were called... Panther, Jaguar.

Yeah, PRAM has to do with the way Macs interact with or configure devices that are connected to them, as far as I know. I tried briefly to learn more but this is all Wikipedia has to say.

super. i'll give this a shot when I get home.

Shot to the heart!

Can you please give us some more info on the external hard drive? Did you format it to HSF+ (MacOS) when you bought it?

If it is formatted with FAT32 (PC) there is a file size limitation which may be why certain (larger) files are not able to be saved.

If it isn't formatted to Mac you can still use it but the problems you're having will continue. The easiest solution would be to copy everything from the drive and re-format using Disk utility.

Hope this helps.

PRAM zap worked a treat! Thanks fm.

I suspect the hdd was disconnected without properly unmounting at some point. Would that cause this, and then be fixed in thus way? Just for future ref

poll-time:

27'' imac i7 with radeon 4850

OR

i7 hackintosh with better graphics card & an SSD etc, but the usual hackintosh hassles

whaddaya reckon?

Me again...

This issue has been bothering me fir a while. I want to be able to share folders between my dude's xp machine and my tiger iBook. Just so we can copy mp3s across basically.

What's the easiest way to do this? My research has suggested that the easiest way involves setting up his machine with a login and password. Which he doesn't already have.

We share a secure wifi connection. Is there a simpler way to network these two machines?

if you both use itunes for music, mess around with enabling network sharing within the itunes program, will at least get you through the door, though not sure whether you can copy mp3's from there. external storage devices are really cheap on the other hand.